Social and behavioral problems in school children are well known. For example, almost every class has its bullies and their victims. Some children are popular; others are neglected by their peers. These social and behavioral problems are known to adversely impact some children's psychological and emotional development. In extreme cases, they may even manifest themselves as outbreaks of violence, such as school shootings. It is also well known that psychologists and mental health professionals can assist students with behavioral problems through a variety of interventions—assuming the problem children can be accurately identified.
Identification of children with behavioral problems is deceptively difficult. Research indicates that their teachers identify only twenty percent of peer-rejected children. Parents are only slightly more accurate, identifying just over thirty percent of children disliked by their peers. Over fifty years of research has shown that the most accurate means of identifying children with social and behavioral problems within the school environment is through sociometric analysis utilizing peer nomination data. Children are asked a series of questions relating to interpersonal relationships and social status, such as whom they most like among their peers, whom they like least, who is picked on, who is aggressive, and the like. The children nominate others in each of these categories from a list of their peers. This peer nomination data is then subjected to statistical analysis to reveal how each child is viewed by his or her peers. See A. H. Cillessen & W. M. Bukowski, Conceptualizing and Measuring Peer Aceptance and Rejection, Recent Advances in the Measurement of Acceptance and Rejection in the Peer System 3-10 (Jossey-Bass, 2000), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety.
While sociometric analysis has proven to be a valuable tool in identifying children with behavioral problems, it is one that is difficult to utilize effectively, particularly by education professionals in the school environment. Typically, a behavioral psychologist prepares the sociometric questionnaire. A list of all students in the peer group—typically all of the children in a particular grade level—must be compiled (and preferably alphabetized by first name, a time-consuming and error-prone task when performed by hand). Once the questionnaire is administered to the students and their responses collected, the data must be entered into a data entry program, and analyzed, often requiring reprogramming of a statistical analysis tool by a statistician.
For example, one aspect of sociometric analysis that has proven useful is the classification of children based on their peer nomination results into one of several groups or sociometric classifications. See J. D. Cosie, et al., Dimensions and Types of Social Status: A Cross-Age Perspective, 18 Developmental Psychology 557 (1982), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety. The statistical analysis tools must be programmed to define these categories and the rules with which children are classified into them. Typically, due to the complexity of the analysis required, only the classification itself is preserved. That is, no scores or weights are generated indicative of the confidence or strength of a given student's classification, or the probability that the same student would be similarly classified in a subsequent survey. Additionally, also due to the complexity of traditional sociometric statistical analysis, self-nominations (indicative of how a student views his or her own social standing) and reciprocal nominations (complimentary pairs of students who nominate each other as least or most liked) are not utilized or even retained. However, both of these types of data are useful to behavioral psychologists and are indicative of important information that can be used in assessing a child's social and behavioral well-being.
Thus, a need exists in the art for a way to streamline and simplify all aspects of sociometric analysis, including data collection, data entry, data analysis and reporting. Furthermore, a need exists in the art for a sociometric analysis tool that can be utilized by education professionals, and does not require the guidance or assistance of behavioral psychologists, statisticians, or others with special skills or training.